There's a moment every person with bad color knows. You look in the mirror and realize: this is not what I asked for.
Maybe the blonde went orange. Maybe the highlights look like tiger stripes. Maybe three years of box dye have created a situation no regular appointment can fix. Whatever the specifics, the feeling is the same — your hair is wrong and you don't know who to trust to make it right.
If that's where you are, this is what you need to know about color correction and why we see more of it than almost any salon in Chicago.
Color correction is not the same as a color appointment
This is the most important thing to understand. A standard color service assumes you're working from a relatively normal starting point. Color correction assumes the opposite — something went wrong, and we need to fix it before we can even think about where you want to end up.
That means the appointment is longer (often 4–8 hours). It might take multiple sessions. It almost always costs more than a standard service because the work is harder, the margin for error is thinner, and the products involved are more expensive.
None of this is meant to scare you. It's meant to set honest expectations — something your last colorist apparently didn't do.
What goes wrong, and why
The most common color corrections we see at Reverie:
Box dye buildup. Years of at-home color creates uneven layers of pigment. The roots lift differently than the mids, which process differently than the ends. You can't just "go blonde" over that — you have to systematically remove each layer.
Over-lightened or fried hair. Someone went too far, too fast with bleach. The hair is gummy, elastic, and possibly breaking. Before any color work, we need to assess structural integrity — often using K18 molecular repair treatments to rebuild bonds.
Banding. Visible lines where old color meets new. Usually the result of overlapping lightener on previously processed hair. Fixing it requires precision placement — sometimes foils, sometimes hand-painting, sometimes both.
Wrong tone entirely. You wanted ash blonde and got copper. You wanted warm brunette and got muddy green. Tonal correction is actually the fastest fix on this list, but it requires a colorist who really understands color theory.
Why this is what we're built for
I started doing color corrections early in my career and never stopped, partly because the puzzle of it appeals to me and partly because the clients who need it are usually the ones who've been let down the most. They walk in guarded. They've been burned — sometimes literally.
My 17 NAHA nominations — including winning Newcomer of the Year in 2012 — came from doing this kind of work. Not simple balayages on virgin hair. Complex, high-stakes transformations where the margin between beautiful and disaster is about 5 minutes of processing time.
Every artist at Reverie trains through Kaizen Education in color correction protocols. It's not an add-on. It's core curriculum.
What a correction appointment looks like
We start with an in-person consultation. Photos help, but we need to see your hair under proper lighting, feel its elasticity, and understand its full history. What products you've used, when, and how many times — all of it matters.
From there, we build a plan. Sometimes it's a single long appointment. Sometimes it's two or three sessions spaced 4–6 weeks apart to give the hair time to recover between rounds. We'll tell you the realistic timeline and cost upfront.
During the actual correction, your colorist gives you focused, personalized attention — this work requires it, and that's exactly what you'll get.
Aftercare and maintaining the result
Corrected hair needs more love than hair that was never damaged. We'll send you home with a specific product plan — usually including K18 for ongoing repair and Davines NOUNOU for hydration. Follow the plan and the correction holds. Skip it and you'll see color shift within weeks.
Ready to fix it?
Book a color correction consultation at Reverie Salon in River North. We'll give you an honest assessment of what's possible, how long it'll take, and what it'll cost. And we'll do it without making you feel bad about what happened — because honestly, bad color happens to everyone. What matters is what you do next.
